Monthly Archives: January 2007

Chad and I began the second hour of Saturday’s show by interviewing Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute on her new book, Marriage and Caste In America. It was an excellent interview, and I highly recommend the book; clicking on the graphic below will take you straight to Amazon. During the third segment, we talked about the Scooter Libby trial, which remains in several respects a mystery to me. We »

…is that a reporter might say what he actually thinks before an editor catches up with him and makes him stop. A case in point: William Arkin writes on “national and homeland security” for the Washington Post. Yesterday morning, in his blog titled Early Warning on the Post’s website, Arkin wrote a post that has to be read to be believed. Titled “The Troops Also Need to Support the American »

Today’s Washington Times reports on the Senate Democrats who have changed their minds about the “surge” in Iraq: [A]t least a dozen Democratic senators who in the past have called for more troops in Iraq … now support a resolution condemning President Bush’s plan to do just that. A few quotes. John Kerry, 2005: We don’t have enough troops in Iraq. Joe Biden, 2005: There’s not enough force on the »

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told reporters today that, in response to demands from the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department is turning over documents that include orders that have been issued by the FISA court, and applications for such orders by investigators. This relates to the NSA’s “domestic”–i.e., international–terrorist surveillance program. With the documents apparently going to Senators Leahy and Specter, as well as to both lawmakers and staffers on »

Dick Morris spoke to a group of conservative journalist types this morning at a breakfast sponsored by the American Spectator. His comments were fascinating, as always. I don’t have time to recount all of the important ones now, so I’ll just give an overview, with my editorial comments in brackets. If I find time, I’ll flesh out his comments later. Morris strongly believes that the Democrats will nominate a ticket »

When Bill Clinton was President, the economy was big news. And rightly so; the 90s, like the 80s, were a time of robust economic growth here in the U.S. What’s odd is that positive news coverage of the economy, which ended with the stock market decline that began in 2000 and the recession that began early in 2001, has never really resumed. The story of the American economy’s superb performance »

Here is what Senator Biden reportedly said about Barack Obama in an interview with Jason Horowitz of the New York Observer: I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that »

Sky News reports that a total of nine British Muslims have now been arrested in a plot to kidnap a British soldier who is a Muslim and has fought in Afghanistgan, and “post a video of the hostage being tortured and killed on the internet.” The suspects are said to be of “Pakistani origin.” A police spokesman who gave a press interview a little while ago said, “We are in »

Today’s New York Times story by James Glanz and Mark Mazzetti reveals some enraging details of the operation that resulted in the murder of five American soldiers in Karbala on January 20. The sophistication of the operation points in the direction of the Mahdi Army and its patrons in Tehran. At the same time the administration appears to have made the calculation that Americans can’t stand stand the truth about »

Regular Power Line Forum readers know that my favorite Forum is Patsy’s, where culture and the arts are discussed and sometimes debated. So that’s the logical place to locate discussion of this post on Libertas, a site devoted to critiques of motion pictures from a conservative perspective. The post critiques the Sundance Film Festival that has just ended, replete as usual with depressing, anti-American films, and is titled, “Gloomy Sundance »

In my first post about the decision of William & Mary’s president to remove the cross from the Wren Chapel, I argued that, though President Nichol claimed he was acting to protect the sensibilities of non-Christians on campus, his decision more likely was driven by his own sensibilities. I pointed out that Nichol had made the decision without any apparent attempt to determine campus sentiment, and that his wife had »

I love political cartoons, but nearly all editorial cartoonists are liberals. The best place I know of to go for a daily dose of cartoon sanity is Town Hall’s Funnies. Here’s a day-brightener from yesterday, by Lisa Benson; click to enlarge: »

The Democrats’ green-eyeshade phase lasted only a couple of weeks. Now the headline is: Democrats Unveil $463.5B Spending Bill, which the Associated Press describes as “massive.” But what, exactly, is in it? Apparently the bill will sweep through both the House and the Senate before we have much chance to find out. But Republicans charged today that the Democrats have gone back on their pledge that “There will be no »

There were two factions in the Clinton administration: the opportunists (the Bill wing) that didn’t care much about the merits of policy outcomes, and the true-believers (the Hillary wing) that cared passionately about increasing our government’s power over the life its citizens and about decreasing its power in the world. Bill Richardson, who is running for president, was a member of the Clinton administration. The good news is that he »

Presidential popularity polls are of limited value at this stage, and online polls are even less probative than most. Nonetheless, it’s interesting that Senator McCain commanded only 5 percent of the support of the nearly 20,000 people who voted in the first round of the Pajamas Media poll. He’s doing even worse so far among the 1,000 or so who have voted in the second round. Indeed, he currently trails »

Yesterday, Brig. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, deputy director of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, said that Iran and North Korea are working together to develop long-range missiles capable of delivering their nuclear weapons. Bill Gertz reports: North Korea test fired a long-range Taepodong missile in July, and Iran is working on a space launcher that would help develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could hit the U.S. “Not only North »